"We’re in the process right now, working with our interagency colleagues as well as the Food and Drug Administration, to determine if we’re going to need potentially annual boosters for any of the potential circulating strains," Disbrow told The Hill. "Right now we do feel that we will potentially need a boost in the fall for those people, especially those above the age of 65, where you do see a more dramatic waning of immunity than you do in younger people."
BARDA, which heads federal vaccine research and development and therapeutics for pathogens, has engaged a major role in the development of COVID-19 vaccines, and Disbrow said the agency will proceed to be the main drive in preparing for future pandemics.
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Disbrow took over at BARDA in November. He had served as acting director after his predecessor, Rick Bright, was fired after clashing with Trump administration officials over the response to the pandemic and the focus on hydroxychloroquine.
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Top scientists at the agency, even before the pandemic hit, helped develop the mRNA technology used in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.
"We had supported Moderna in their technology previously for Zika, helping them scale up," said Disbrow. "At the time they were very, very small scale for manufacturing. So even the investments that we made in 2016 for the Zika outbreak for Moderna has assisted them in being capable of manufacturing at commercial scale their COVID-19 vaccine." He added that the investment started in January and February 2020, before the outbreak took hold and before the agency got supplemental funding.
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The work also started before the Trump administration began its Operation Warp Speed drive, said Disbrow, because "you never know which vaccine technology is going to be the one that provides the highest efficacy against different pathogens. In this case, it happens to be the mRNA vaccines.”
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In the meantime, researchers are now focusing on the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines, along with therapeutics that have already been authorized for emergency use by the Food and Drug Administration, said Disbrow.
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"We're now turning towards antiviral small molecule drugs which are critically important,” he said. Those drugs inhibit the reproduction of a virus, and some have the potential to apply to a "broad spectrum meeting against multiple families of the family of coronavirus is not just SARS-CoV-2."
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